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huh m didn't know D&D was turning 50 this year . Should had named it D&D 50 . As its very close to 5e , and its how old D&D was when they published it . similarly to World of Darkness : 20 anniversary edition
COME ON!! GET WITH IT!!! THIS IS ALL GOOD NEWS!!! Hasbro goes bankrupt. WOTC goes bankrupt. Hasbro can't sell at a price they want, because buyers don't want a license that they have to share with 3rd party publishers. 3rd party publishers WIN. 3rd party publishers TAKE OVER!!! Why aren't U celebrating?
A dragon lance movie, in my opinion, (and without the woke crap) would have made more sense. And a forgotten episodic TV show would have been better (again without the woke garbage).
Don't give Hasbro your money. If you love D&D, just continue playing your current flavor and supporting the community. You're not required to "upgrade."
@@Immudzen exactly. I'm a huge fan of Kobold Press and Frog God Games, while always looking for other quality companies to support. WotC can go bite a displacer beast's bottom.
Or even move away from D&D into other fantasy games. Relly enjoying Dungeon World, DCC, Forbidden Lands, and Tales of Xadia. Now looking over the Dragonbane stuff I got with the Roll20 Humble Bundle. There are lots of options out there.
As a Former HASBRO Creative Director of 4 years, Hasbro doesn’t know anything about Brand Love… they kept trying to make profitable decisions based on strategist numbers, but not realizing that PEOPLE buy their products (not numbers) and they don’t realize their corporate decisions come across as profit-mongering to their audience, and thus their strategies have the Opposite effect.
Wish I could say that I haven't heard that song and dance before. It's honestly baffling to me. Because here's this stuff happening that literally any idiot with eyes knows is REALLY bad for the brand. But then you have all these highly paid industry leaders sitting around in a board room scratching their heads all like "Why are we loosing customers?". x_x
@@cheezeofagesbecause "numbers don't lie" They fail to realize that numbers do tell multiple truths depending on how you look at them. And rarely do you have all of the numbers.
That's quite an accomplishment for a company to loose a billion dollars in revenue during last 3 months of a year. Rephrased: for a toy and entertainment company to not make money during Christmas...
as a huge LEGO fan i can say that HASBRO's Kre-o product was actually very nice and the figs were great but they ran it into the ground. Now we have LEGO making D&D.
"Most people don't know the difference between Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, or Middle-earth for that matter" with the background graphics XD ... very clever.
Ideally, D&D will be put entirely into creative commons for independent creators to do with as they will, because the idea of "official D&D" is a huge part of what ruins D&D.
The main problem of Hasbro and EVERY BIG COMPANY these days is that the ones in the lead have NOTHING to do with the Business. They are Executives first and last, they have no ties to ANY company and there only job is to squeeze every cent from a brand and go on like locusts.
"The Locusts of Wallstreet" sums it up better than 'wolves'. Wolves serve a purpose in supporting a healthy ecosystem; locusts imbalance ecosystems, leaving a wasteland in their wake.
MBAs are the most overrated qualification. They're just glorified accountants (minus the qualification in accounting, in many cases), who only know how to play with numbers. So many companies have been ruined, or come close to ruin, because the MBAs were put in charge to the exclusion of people who actually understand the core business and products.
Even worse... the executives don't care about the long term viability of the business they've been hired to run. Those execs will do whatever it takes to increase short term profits to get those bonuses. If they make a couple 30 million and tank the company and get fired with a golden parachute they could care less if they unemploy everyone working under them. It's sick, it's broken, and it's wrong. Executives should only get rewarded for stewarding their company for long term profitability and treating their customers well goes a long way towards long term viability. I never trust anyone that wears a suit and a tie.
I'd go further and say that the execs don't only need ties to the business, but also to the craft. They need hard skills in making the product they sell, and knowledge of what people like about it. It's obvious that only a chef can run a kitchen, but, for some reason, it's a-ok for execs to run creative studios that make games, music or movies. So often are all of the decisions made by people with no hard skills in a creative discipline, no experience actually writing or designing anything, and no imagination. From personal experience in video game development, it's absolutely deadly to a studio, but also absolutely THE usual way it happens. Which is why so many studios implode before they've even shipped a single game, and why the majority of AAA titles are unplayable.
What more appropriate way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of DnD by making the same sort of shortsighted layoffs that TSR used to make (admittedly TSR HAD to do the layoffs due to their mismanagement and Hasbro is just doing it because they don't understand that DnD is one of their few golden geese)
They are kicking people because they don't understand that perpetual growth isn't a real thing. So they kick people to get back into a "Green" "Growth" spike. While at the same time angering all the fans so that they don't want to buy more products, and the spiral continues. Take care of your employees, take care of your consumers and you will be golden. You might not see a Green arrow every year, but over time it will be more green than red at least.
@@Atrivion And that sort of common sense is why you just got fired and replaced with someone who promised infinite growth and used a lot of marketing buzzwords.
yeah i don't understand the demand for infinant growth. Like if my company made 200 million dollars i would be ecstatic if i made that much the next year and the next year forever.
@@BassRacerx Publicly traded companies need their shares to be high-priced and desirable, and to not get sold off. How do they do that? Give the shareholders constant growth. The shareholders are generally not privy to the company's workings, so they don't know or care HOW this happens, or if the process is killing the golden goose. If they don't get this, they'll sell off their shares and re-invest in another company that CAN deliver this. The board members don't have a particular reason to care, not when they can just spike the growth with unsustainable and predatory practices, and then ride their golden parachute to a cushy cash-out. Yes, the company will implode after they leave, but that's a Not Me problem. And the actual managers must deliver the expected results or get fired. Essentially, it's the bystander effect. The shareholders, the board and the management can all tell themselves that they're not responsible for this insane and self-destructive system.
As someone further down the thread wrote, "you're not required to upgrade". I started playing in the 80s with AD&D1e and stayed with it until 4th edition was announced and my group switched to Pathfinder. Nearly all of us decided we liked the mechanics of 3.5/Pathfinder and with all of the resources between them, we'll never need to run out of options for play. I hope D&D pulls itself out of the hole it's digging, but it looks like we're seeing shades of 1998 when TSR had warehouses full of books they couldn't sell. They got lucky when Wizards bought them. I hope that luck continues. But if it dies on the vine, 50 years is an amazing run and there enough edtions of the game to keep people playing a long time, because, again, no one's required to upgrade.
That argument pisses me off, sure I am not required to update... but I also want new people to enter the hobby and people generally want physical NEW copies to do that. D&D being active draws new people in all the time.
Silence, communist! Capitalism is a meritocracy, and I’m sure they got there through hard work, gumption, and… and… *snicker* Yeah, I couldn’t keep it up. In all seriousness, eat the rich.
Company Director Culture places every importance on lawyers and accountants with MBAs, because they make the numbers look right, and zero importance on people with actual understanding of the core business, products, and market. Making the numbers look right is all that matters when it comes to their ridiculous bonuses and cashing in their stock options, and they don't plan on sticking around any longer than they can successfully massage those numbers. They leave when the company is on the brink of collapse and some other sucker has to deal with it. Many perfectly viable companies have gone down the drain this way.
Oh they are. Fans have told them they don't need WotC to have fun/enjoy the game/or even support people making compatible materials. We are looking at the end and I think it's okay because, as Gygax foresaw, his greatest fear was when players realized they didn't need the books. That's finally happened, so they're strip mining the IP and selling it for scrap. It was always going to happen, line can't go up forever etc. etc.
Are they actually killing DnD? Yes. Are they trying? Probably not, no. Never assume malice where stupidity properly explains a situation. We're looking at stupidity.
I called this about 5 years ago. When Chris Cox was the CEO of Wizards, and was instructed to double the revenue of Magic The Gathering (MTG) over 3 years. Which they did. I think they actually quadrupled it. BUT!!! I've seen this happen before with other public companies. The growth is not implemented sustainably. So MTG is now starting to take a downturn. With the initial success of raising the revenue of MTG, Chris Cox was moved up into Hasbro. So that revenue raising mentality was being applied to many IP's in Hasbro. But the unethical, unsustainable growth is causing more problems and more backlash. They tried to grow too quickly, too unsustainably, and now they are starting to crumble because they've predicted 'Growth' in revenue, when it's actually just been a 'Spike'. So much of their revenue push has been on getting existing players to spend more, not by increasing their market share.
Instructing a CEO to double revenue basically means: "Please give us fake numbers the next time and use every trick in the book to dress up the bottom line while the company is burning outside of the C-suite meeting rooms."
@@EdwinSteiner I figured it means "burn this thing into the ground, because some of the important people (investors) want to move on at the highest note possible". Investors don't give a shit about about what they make.
That and people hate all things ESG and DEI related. I believe Disney is getting sued for implementing DEI hiring practices. Eventually more companies will get sued for DEI hiring practices.
Well, more specifically, the people who usually end up in charge of corporations. Which they often do because they don’t care about anything other than quarterly profits, so… yeah, never mind, it all comes to the same thing.
Not entirely true. A lot of corporations these days will sacrifice profits to push a political agenda. i.e. Get woke, go broke. Just look at corporations like Disney and a number of video game studios that have condemned potential customers for not buying their woke garbage losing millions and many that also went bankrupt. Another great example is Anheuser-Busch and their destruction of the Bud Light brand over woke nonsense.
Hasbro just doesn't understand TTRPGs. What players imagine together is what's fun, not what Hasbro tries to sell. If you take away human creativity there's no driving force. Replace creativity with a machine and you get another video game. They are trying to reinvent the wheel and applying thier clown makeup acting like we need them, and not the other way around.
@@THELUBINTHEMORNING To the extent that they *do* understand TTRPGs, though, they don’t like them. The traditional mode of play doesn’t create the golden goose they’re looking for. If they understood their product and their audience better, I’m not sure how much they’d be doing differently.
@@steelmongoose4956 If that's true then they could stand to learn a lesson from the outcome of their hubris. They are squeezing money out of of the proverbial sponge, but they need to loosen their grip before consumers will soak it with money again.
We survived the Satanic Panic, we've endured the Offended Onslaught, we will live on after the Corporate Clusterf*ck. We are the gamers, the Wet-Ears and the Grognards. The Newbies and the Veterans We homebrew, we house rule, we play to our tastes. Raise a tankard brothers and sisters, and roll for initiative!
Hasbro wants to make as much money as it can with as little effort as it can. They are drying up the IRL experience to force people into their virtual DnD Roblox knock off.
The saddest part of the Hidden Path Entertainment cancellation is that they were informed of this via Twitter/X. In January 2023 in the midst of the OGL scandal, there was a Bloomberg article which stated that 5 un-named D&D video game projects were being cancelled. After being asked about it, Hidden Path Entertainment released a statement on Twitter saying that their project with WotC was still happening, and that they were hiring for positions. The author of the Bloomberg article replied to that post confirming that they stood by their reporting, and they had 2 sources (one a WotC spokesperson) confirming that Hidden Path's project was one of the ones cancelled.
I really hate this stupid trend of companies announcing firings on Twitter before even telling the employees, branches or studios in question. Same with company policy changes. Like, why are you giving orders to the social media team to blast this out first? Go talk to your employees and implement changes properly rather than throwingit out into the void of social media and expecting everyone to get their shit together from there. It's lazy at best and utterly incompetent at worst. To have a Tweet from an _entirely different company_ be the way you're informed you're fired... That's disgusting.
Buy NOTHING while our beloved game is being held hostage. Nothing. No video game. No books. No VTT service. Not a single godamn thing. They get NOTHING
You can count me in. Hasbro and WotC will never see my money again. Dungeon Crawl Classics Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea And Lamentations of the Flame Princess gives me everything I could have wanted from them and more.
I stopped since the OGL mess. Now I’m just getting stuff from the _former_ 3rd parties. Emphasis on “former”. Gah. The greed of Hasbro/WotC is *sickening*.
Wizards of the Coast will not see another red cent from me, when came back to the hobby and everyone was playing 5E it looked like they had gotten their act together, but the last year has shown me that my coin is better spent on 3rd party and independent games.
Might I recommend -Dungeon Crawl Classics -Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea -Lamentations of the Flame Princess -Castles and Crusades -Dungeonesque -Into the Unknown -Five Torches Deep Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
Exactly. Between Paizo, Kobold Press, Frog God, Goodman Games, Legendary Games, and a host of others, there isn't a shortage of quality content, a lot of which is 5e compatible, for those who don't want to learn a new system.
If you're still playing "D&D", you're part of the problem, you're still contributing to the idea that D&D is The Game, you're still contributing to other people buying D&D products. If you genuinely care about the health of tabletop gaming, play other systems (and not just PF2e either).
@@yurisei6732 Eh, i wouldn't hate on ppl for playing dnd, even if there are better systems out there and also it would be great for ttrpg industry's health if the plethora of other systems got more players. Like, all those dnd5e books make me go Eugh. Who plays cyberpunk in dnd5e? Why not play Cyberpunk Red or smth? Won't it be a much better experience?? Dnd is kinda like elder scrolls games - yes, they are buggy and such, but it's ppl's hobby to try and fix dnd at this point. Plus even with a barely functional system you can have fun (like how Shadowrun never had a good edition, but is fun cause of the great setting and such)
It will forever remain absolutely bizzare to me that Hasbro took Wizards of the Coast, pretty much their only profitable branch thats left and decided to take them out back for the Old Yeller treatment. If WotC are your only branch with pretty much 2 billion dollar ips and everything else you own is floundering, why are they gutting wotc so much when that should be where their investment as a company goes. If im being honest i think somebody wants out, and theyve decided the only way to go is by dousing the whole thing in gasoline and striking a match
Just as George Lucas says, "It's like poetry. It rhymes." They probably want a 50% downsize of the company. That way each year can represent another loss in staff, but a gain in profit!
I miss file sharing for this reason……lost all my Star Wars and DnD rpg books in a fire. I was raised on DnD and ADnD …….so to replace them is a horrible endeavour.
I've been online since getting that AOL disk in 1992. "There's always next Christmas" was hands down one of the most devastating things I have ever seen anyone say onliine. It was also extremely important. The people who made D&D into what it is deserve to be treated better.
To be blunt, the people who made D&D into what it is (now) deserve to be treated worse. 3.0 was probably the golden time for D&D. The rules weren't perfect but they were a breath of fresh air. And the Corporate attitude was a 180 compared to Lorraine Williams' mismanagement of the company.
The people at WotC for the life of 5th and part of 4th ed are part of the problem. They vilified the older fan base calling use problematic, misogynists, racists. Then catered to people who hated D&D nerds in the past. Then the mask comes off and horrible announcements that make GW look reasonable happened.
@@dirus3142 to be fair...a lot of the old dnd content is sexists, racist and just down right problimatic...like there is lore about how drow females get off to twins fighting in the womb, and how in the first edtion of dnd females were considerd weaker MECHANCIALY and got de-buffs for being females of course you gotta draw the line somewere and some of the things they say are problematic are downright stupid (i mean fantasy racisim isn't real racisim) but like the steryotyping and asigning diffrent fantasy races to real world steriotypes....
@@dirus3142 Allways seems to be someone else's fault isn't it? Is just like Disney, they start making incredibly shitty movies, and suddenly is the evil corporate firing inocent working people, as if they didn't deserve to be fired with malicious intent in the first place. For all the problems X might have now, people sure quickly forgot the shithole it was as Twitter. It just took 80% of the staff to make that change.
The gaming industry laying off all these people seems like a shot in the foot to me, in my experience of being an artist with friends who are active in the industry, a lot of the people who work in these companies are also the people who buy the products, it feels like with so many lay offs everywhere less people will have the funds to actually buy things, also, this was always going to happen, no industry can grow forever and I think they pretty much got to the bottom of everyone who can actually afford to game.
I've been Forever DMing D&D games in person since 3.5 edition, and I'm actually okay with it. I've been playing since 2nd edition and have put so many years into D&D that I'm cool with only being a DM these years. Honestly, I get more enjoyment out of it on this side of the screen. But I never run official campaign stories. I have all the side content books, the stuff that's full of things for players and items and monsters, but I avoid the books that are just mostly 80% campaigns since I don't run them. I usually base my games in the Forgotten Realms on the Sword Coast, but I create my own stories and adventures for the players to enjoy. (Or as we all know, I let them create the story and it loosely ties to the end goals I had set in motion for them.) My players and friends know that ever since all this weird behavior started with Hasbro/Wizards (mainly the idea they would go all online and charge everyone for everything to even access something to use in a game.) that if it came down to it, we're fine! I can continue running games in person using what I have and all the stuff I already create as needed. I'm really thinking 5th edition will be the last time I pay for anything officially D&D if this crazy stuff keeps up.
Saw this coming when i could not effectively transfer my character to its system, 4th ed, that i had since AD&D. The boys and me play Pathfinder as a sup to 3.5 and have been loving it for years. Do take a few things though from 4th like their minion rules. The only thing i took from 5th was scaling cantrip dmg.
I am remembering a movie scene where Jeremy Irons is telling gis employees that they were going to get ahead of the 2008 financial crash by screwing everyone before they are screwed.
I never saw the D&D movie but it sounds more subversive than I imagined. (Jeremy apparently took the role because he had a castle to pay for. Good on him for getting in a dig at predatory capitalism.
The difference though is that Irons’ company in Margin Call still had some care for their employees. Even if it was purely pragmatic, at least those guys got huge bonuses to either shut them up or get the job done. Hasbro’s case is an unfathomable mix of greed, short-sightedness, and self-inflicted injury.
@@javierpatag3609 That is a good point. Those traders had their careers torched, and their professional relationships ruined but they got the kind of bonuses that let you start over. Jeremy Irons may have been an evil narcissist setting fire to the nation's economy in order to avoid paying for his own hubris. But at least he had standards.
I was a Wizards of the Coast employee who got "downsized" and booted in the first round of purges right after Hasbro acquired WotC back in 2000-2001. Hasbro is a soulless, hateful corporation who have never understood games. They buy companies, interested only in profits. When they don't get the money they want, they punish the employees. They don't care about the games you love. They don't care about fans. They don't care about customers. They care about money, and NOTHING else. They aren't shy about this at all. They openly admit it. DO NOT give Hasbro your money. Ever.
I knew there was a streaming service but I’ve never been able to actually find a video or stream… ever. Found dead links and roundabout links, but that’s it.
It's almost as if anything that could have a unifying effect - bringing people of various generations, backgrounds, and walks of life together - is being deliberately dismantled while concurrently manufacturing drama that keeps the respective groups fighting amongst themselves.
All of this is so fucking sad. D&D saw a renaissance with 5e. I was able to get so many people who were completely terrified of 3.5's crunch at the table and enjoying themselves, Critical Role became a thing, D&D Beyond was really cool, excellent campaigns were being released, etc, etc. It's incredibly disappointing to see Hasbro torpedo the entire brand in such a short time frame. I'm just at a loss for words watching this train wreck happen
Calling 5E a "Renaissance" is like saying that you really like what the lobotomy did for your sibling because they are so much easier to handle, just sitting in the corner and drooling. This train wreck should have happened in 2008 with the joke that was 4th Edition but people who were willing to Weekend at Bernie's something in order to call themselves a fan kept this zombie shuffling until now.
If it means anything the OSR community is supporting the hobby behind the scenes. If you want something good from a company that doesn't view you as a dollar sign and nothing more. I recommend taking interest in one of them. If you can't step away from 5E mechanics I recommend Dungeonesque Five Torches Deep Or Into the Unknown
@@VictorTejada-y2z I feel like we have very different opinions on the importance of gatekeeping in maintaining the integrity and quality of a group or product. I have played since Advanced 2E and the quality of player has been a slow decline since then. IMO 3.5 struck the perfect combo of maintaining game/player quality while increasing accessibility, 4E and 5E were just WotC enticing people who have trouble blinking and breathing simultaneously to pad their bottom line while making long time fans have to sort through an ever increasing rough for some diamonds.
Because they're bad at their job and DnD hasn't had a good edition since 3.5. The 'designers' dont even play tabletop RPGS at all, and dont even understand how imbalanced their own game is.
Worst part about this for me personally, I literally just got back in contact with my old D&D group from two years ago, and was going to celebrate by figuring out what books I could get for each of them to help them with their characters and interests... Now the idea of buying the books feels kinda sick... Even buying books for myself just feels a little gross....
It's still a great idea! Just buy something that's not published by WotC. There are tons of cool third party books out there, which would have the added bonus of supporting some of the best D&D channels on UA-cam.
@@Zoe-uz9kn ... and there are probably enough people pissed off enough at WotC/Hasbro that they want to ditch D&D for some other system that second-hand availability should be no problem.
@@TheManyVoicesVA it seems Larian Studios cares more about D&D then WOTC/Hasbro with all their pandering to woke crap…hell you get half races in BG3 which WOTC is changing in the new PHB
Might I Recommend -Dungeon Crawl Classics -Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea -Lamentations of the Flame Princess -Castles and Crusades -Dungeonesque -Into the Unknown -Five Torches Deep Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
Hasbro seems to be unintentinally scrapping D&D. I'm sure Hasbro and _perhaps_ even WotC can recover from all these scandals and lay-offs, but I'm not sure D&D can. Not under tgeir management, at least. I van't imagine how many more people will move on from D&D because of the delay to the updated rules's release
Great video! Really has felt like Hasbro is strip-mining the IP. Maybe it would be best for them to focus on MTG digital, but I hope that doesn't mean D&D movies/games/physical products are going extinct. Your LOTR "Look to the East reference" was hilarious! =)
Are you trolling, or did you show Pathfinder's Golarian when saying "Dragonlance" and switch to a shot of Eberon when saying "Forgotten Realms:" to make a rhetorical point? Either way, well done, and ow my brainpan...
Had a friend just talk about some of this not that long ago. He talked about how confused he was by all of the BS Hasbro was doing when all they really had to do when they got DnD was to make a few shows, both for adults and kids (get 'em while their young), make minis and buildable sets (he said himself he would would have gone nuts over it if they had made set maps where you can keep buying things to add to buildings and what) and even make some really fun die. Maybe even come up with some more gimmicky toy stuff people would have loved to buy. That's all they had to do and they would have made a mint! They wouldn't even have to fire anyone and they could have taken all of the credit for everything. But noooo they had to think they knew better than what the players wanted and tried to fix something that wasn't even broken. Now I don't know if any of that WOULD have made them a mint but honestly it would have been really cool, imo, to be able to buy sets of different locations I could build and put together for our games. And also just have some stuff to decorate around the place if they were kind of nice. AND a kid cartoon show about the world of DnD would have been a really good idea to get the kids into it. My Little Adventurers! Hell, you want a gimmick for the show that fits a bit more game play? Give the characters magical die they have to roll to get power ups or something like that and then SELL THOSE DIE. It's really to bad about the Drangonlance show. While not over all my favorite story line it IS however a great idea for a show and it really would have brought a lot of people into the game. Or at least be interested in DnD stuff.
Everyone who was excited for Tencent buying D&D because "they couldn't do worse" is going to be incredibly dismayed when it ultimately gets sold to someone even worse. Shitty companies don't sell their IPs to better ones. They'll always get more money from worse companies, because the shittiest companies are the ones who can make the most from absolutely destroying beloved properties. Also, super curious to see if Stephen Glicker is right about release date tomfoolery actually being about re-categorizing the physical products as "games" rather than "books" to squeeze retailers for higher cuts of sales, and the ability to reject returns.
D&D sucks anyway. It used to be good a long time ago, back in 1st and 2nd ed. Downhill ever since. But it's not a problem, because they have paved the way for MUCH better games.
Third party content has been better and more inspiring for a few years now. I have started pouring into those and have not looked back. No regrets and fantastic games.
Might I recommend -Dungeon Crawl Classics -Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea -Lamentations of the Flame Princess -Castles and Crusades -Dungeonesque -Into the Unknown -Five Torches Deep Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
At this point the only thing people can do his claim the franchise under the public fandom and do their things 'un-officially'. Hasbro his going in flames, the next editions are likely gonna be a.i. produce anyway ( cheaper and just a add brand on cover to sell billion ).
Fans and 3rd Party definetely do it better than the original handlers now. Fans post stuff for free and 3rd Party actually provide content in their products. How could WOTC ever compete?
I love that people slathering for WotC have been going "well people can always buy the old monster manual" That is horrible advice, not only do we know there will be substantial power creep over the powercreep we already had in tashas... but people are recommending an old already poorly balanced book to new people, which will be replaced mere months.
And if your looking from something else. Might I recommend -Dungeon Crawl Classics -Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea -Lamentations of the Flame Princess -Castles and Crusades -Dungeonesque -Into the Unknown -Five Torches Deep Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
I'm one of the people who is still looking forward to the proposed changes to 5e because as time has gone forward from 2014, I think the foundations for a newer edition have never been stronger thanks in large part to the robustness of 5e. However, the never-ending shit show that has been the corporate-level decisions have been sabotaging my hopes for the simple desire of parting in ONE D&D or whatever the hell they call it in the future. And that's all tainted PURELY by these high-level decision. D&D happens at the table, but I don't see why I have to pay the price for progress because a CEO (and company) wanted a bonus. But they were never the stewards of the game to start with. I'm so infuriated by the ceaseless money-grubbing at the expense of the large group of fans who Hasbro has only ever taken for granted. This is probably not a popular opinion, as I understand and don't blame people for abandoning D&D as an IP over these unending problems, but the game is OURS to run and I fundamentally feel like I'm struggling against a wave of greed that only wants to milk my hobby for all its worth.
What happened? They betrayed their core audience and are rightfully paying for it. This didn't start in December 2023, it has been brewing for years and WotC/Hasbro took a rapid series of actions around the beginning of 2023. They violated M:tG's Reserve List and tried to ditch the OGL before they sent armed thugs after a small time UA-cam channel. After years of declining quality of products and art, a lot of long time players have checked out. WotC/Hasbro wanted to court a "modern audience", let's see how they do with them. How is that DM crisis going?
WOTC’s Dragonlance slipcase and board game sold poorly because they were poorly written trash that notably excluded consultation with the original authors. WotC couldn’t allow another Dragonlance piece of writing OUTSHINE their terrible handling of the IP. As Joe Manganiello said, D&D quality has been all down hill since they demoted Mike Mearls, who was the main consultant to Larian for BG3. I think WIZBRO is taking a page from Disney’s play book and tanking every legacy franchise they own on purpose. That will give D&D fans nowhere else to go but to the VTT. If there VTT fails to hit the $1b annual revenue by 2027, you’ll see Hasbro either moth ball or sell off the D&D IP. Personally, I wish they would sell off all of the TSR era IPs separately and just retain 3E, 4E, 5E and 6E.
One of the things I find very frustrating as a both a pro-DM and a someone who runs a D&D club for teens is, the lack of content from WotC for the content making D&D popular. When the movie came out, I got a bunch of new players who wanted to play games themed around the movie. Other than stat blocks and magic items, there was no official content. And now with Baldur's Gate 3 being still very popular, other than stat blocks, we still have no official content from WotC. The Dragonlance TV show would have been awesome in terms of growing interest in the Dragonlance WotC content - It was tempting me to invest in the related books, but now that is unlikely. From someone with a business background, I don't understant the choices WotC are making. Either there is something they are planning and keeping it very secret, or someone is making terrible decisions. Great video. Keep up the good work. I also had no idea about the D&D stream - and I'm ussually on to it with D&D stuff!
Just gives me stronger desire to translate 5th edition to other systems. Hell, someone could make more money than Hasbro selling conversion kits to Pathfinder, etc.
A lot of 3pp bestiaries port over to Pathfinder surprisingly easily, I've found. With those in hand, some major product identity statblocks converted, the actual adventures probably go down real smooth. Honestly, the hardest part of converting Sunless Citadel was wrapping my head around Pathfinder's Hazards system for traps.
Might I recommend -Dungeon Crawl Classics -Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea -Lamentations of the Flame Princess -Castles and Crusades -Dungeonesque -Into the Unknown -Five Torches Deep Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
".. there's a D&D Streaming service.." oh yeah I remember someone cracking jokes about no one knowing it had launched a few years ago... totally forgot that existed!
I got into roleplaying through Battletech and MechWarrior and haven't looked D&D ever since THAC0. But, I love roleplaying games and then are so many out there! Back in the day I played a lot of Vampire TM, Rifts, Palladium Fantasy, Ninjas and Super Spies, (A lot of Palladium) and Cyberpunk, MechWarrior, and others... D&D is generic fantasy, which has only become more and more generic as they merge all the different settings into one. Oh, Werewolf was and is a great RPG. Play out stuff. D&D will probably get sold to Tencent as the currently considered debunked rumors said.
Hasbro will never sell the D&D IP. They will shove it in storage and sit on it until a time in the future they think they could get the money they feel they deserve. They sat on the MLP IP for 20ish years before they struck lightning with Friendship is Magic. There hasn't really been much of anything from GIJoe since the cartoons, except a couple failures of movies and their recent toy line. So I highly doubt they will sell off the D&D IP unless some company comes by and offers an excessively groutesque amount of money. Sadly.
Best to leave and find something better. Might I recommend -Dungeon Crawl Classics -Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea -Lamentations of the Flame Princess -Castles and Crusades -Dungeonesque -Into the Unknown -Five Torches Deep Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
This is so sad. Our group hasn't bought any new D&D books or anything related in at least 8 years. We play 3.5 Ed and Pathfinder 1 Ed and have since those were released, so this doesn't effect us. I've really loved watching the 'D&D renaissance' since 5 Ed was released, but have been mystified by Hasbroken's seeming sacrifice of the cash cow. WTAF?!?! SMFH.
Oh well. Back to my Gen X solo games. Roll 1 dice. Roll a 1: one night with Samatha Fox Roll a 2: one night with Belinda Carlisle. Roll a 3: One night with Toni Basil. Roll a 4: one night with Kim Wilde Roll a 5: one night with Madonna [hey man I have to put one booby prize option in here] Roll a 6: one night with Kylie MInogue.
Hasbros hasn't been able to assemble a decent rendition of any of the classic DnD settings (TSR settings...) With the possible exceptions of Toril and Oerth in the 3rds, since they took over the product line. Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Dragonlance, Planescape, as they exist now, are basically just hardcover magazine articles, and they can't even expand them to their full extent due to the fact that they made each one more generic in tone. Spelljammer used to be sci-fi meets fantasy, now it's high fantasy IN SPACE. Ravenloft used to be gothic, now it's creepy high fantasy, there was nothing high fantasy about Dark Sun, so they just dropped it entirely. The settings used to be more distinct, even at a glance, in every edition prior to this one, I hate 4e but even then the settings they covered were distinct. There is simply nothing that contemporary DnD offers that I'm interested in: from shady business practices (to say the least) to lazy game design I'll keep playing my older editions, but if I want to play a less crunchy 3.5 (5e) I'll just homebrew that shit. Or just play BECMI and call it a day.
Hasbro announced that it expects a 3-5% drop this year, and with the absolute failure of the newest Magic set you can expect it to be worse than that. My guess is that Hasbro has realized they can't squeeze DnD players like they do Magic players, and the plan is to pretty much stop doing anything for DnD.
The image used at 8:47 for "Dragonlance" is actually the Pathfinder Setting and the image used at 8:49 for "Forgotten Realms" is actually the Eberron setting. Just FYI.
When a company puts profit over base, well, it is off-putting to the audience, and they move on to something else. Hasbro will learn the hard way. I normally buy MTG but haven't in recent years cos they feel meh compared to the older stuff. Never played DnD, but I have played MTG and read the Forgotten Realms books. Only played BG3 in the DnD portion of the franchise.
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huh m didn't know D&D was turning 50 this year .
Should had named it D&D 50 .
As its very close to 5e , and its how old D&D was when they published it .
similarly to World of Darkness : 20 anniversary edition
COME ON!! GET WITH IT!!! THIS IS ALL GOOD NEWS!!! Hasbro goes bankrupt. WOTC goes bankrupt. Hasbro can't sell at a price they want, because buyers don't want a license that they have to share with 3rd party publishers. 3rd party publishers WIN. 3rd party publishers TAKE OVER!!! Why aren't U celebrating?
What could possibly be better news for D&D than this?
A dragon lance movie, in my opinion, (and without the woke crap) would have made more sense. And a forgotten episodic TV show would have been better (again without the woke garbage).
This is what happens when a company cares more about profit than they do about making money.
Don't give Hasbro your money. If you love D&D, just continue playing your current flavor and supporting the community. You're not required to "upgrade."
Honestly a lot of the 3rd party content is MUCH better than what Hasbro is putting out. Use that.
@@Immudzen exactly. I'm a huge fan of Kobold Press and Frog God Games, while always looking for other quality companies to support. WotC can go bite a displacer beast's bottom.
Yep!
Or even move away from D&D into other fantasy games. Relly enjoying Dungeon World, DCC, Forbidden Lands, and Tales of Xadia. Now looking over the Dragonbane stuff I got with the Roll20 Humble Bundle.
There are lots of options out there.
Also an option… but second hand. I’ve gotten great deals on old books for D&D this way!
As a Former HASBRO Creative Director of 4 years, Hasbro doesn’t know anything about Brand Love… they kept trying to make profitable decisions based on strategist numbers, but not realizing that PEOPLE buy their products (not numbers) and they don’t realize their corporate decisions come across as profit-mongering to their audience, and thus their strategies have the Opposite effect.
In other news water is wet.
@@gateauxq4604
Evil Hasbro Executive: “MOIST…”
Wish I could say that I haven't heard that song and dance before. It's honestly baffling to me. Because here's this stuff happening that literally any idiot with eyes knows is REALLY bad for the brand. But then you have all these highly paid industry leaders sitting around in a board room scratching their heads all like "Why are we loosing customers?". x_x
You'd think companies would have learned to not fall into the McNamara fallacy (aka the quantitative fallacy) over and over, but they never do.
@@cheezeofagesbecause "numbers don't lie"
They fail to realize that numbers do tell multiple truths depending on how you look at them. And rarely do you have all of the numbers.
Imagine how much money they could save if they fired Chris cox ceo
Nah, they'd gain way more money if they did that.
Don't forget that the ceo is hired and paid by the board / major shareholders.
The ceo is only the tip of the iceberg
@@JustAnAstronautPerson that's what he just said 💀
Because the joke is Hasbro would rather make decisions that'd lose them money, not make more@@DucksAndCatnip
@@DucksAndCatnip I know what he said, and I know what I said... captain obvious
💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
"Most people don't know the difference between Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms!" \*shows images of Golarion from Pathfinder\*
i chose violence
And Azeroth from World of Warcraft...Violence indeed :P
Just proves her point if they don't notice.
The forgotten realms picture being Eberron, a setting I actively DM for, was absolutely hilarious
Golarion and Eberron are better than Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms anyway
That's quite an accomplishment for a company to loose a billion dollars in revenue during last 3 months of a year. Rephrased: for a toy and entertainment company to not make money during Christmas...
Exactly
as a huge LEGO fan i can say that HASBRO's Kre-o product was actually very nice and the figs were great but they ran it into the ground. Now we have LEGO making D&D.
Chris Cock making > $8 million a year. Seriously, layoffs should be top to bottom
Competing with Disney.
"Most people don't know the difference between Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, or Middle-earth for that matter" with the background graphics XD ... very clever.
I believe that’s what dooms any D&D movie: The lack of brand awareness, which takes time to build.
Ideally, d&d will be sold to a PRIVATE company where players are recognized as customers rather than parasitic investors.
Joe apparently offered to buy Dragonlance. Hasbro declined. Morons.
Yeah, like Evil Genius Games! Wait. . . .
would be kinda funny and poetic if Paizo bought it
@@Telleryn But I doubt that will happen. I mean, Hasboro will want probably more money for it than Paizo would be able to put together for it.
Ideally, D&D will be put entirely into creative commons for independent creators to do with as they will, because the idea of "official D&D" is a huge part of what ruins D&D.
The main problem of Hasbro and EVERY BIG COMPANY these days is that the ones in the lead have NOTHING to do with the Business. They are Executives first and last, they have no ties to ANY company and there only job is to squeeze every cent from a brand and go on like locusts.
"The Locusts of Wallstreet" sums it up better than 'wolves'. Wolves serve a purpose in supporting a healthy ecosystem; locusts imbalance ecosystems, leaving a wasteland in their wake.
Facts
MBAs are the most overrated qualification. They're just glorified accountants (minus the qualification in accounting, in many cases), who only know how to play with numbers. So many companies have been ruined, or come close to ruin, because the MBAs were put in charge to the exclusion of people who actually understand the core business and products.
Even worse... the executives don't care about the long term viability of the business they've been hired to run. Those execs will do whatever it takes to increase short term profits to get those bonuses. If they make a couple 30 million and tank the company and get fired with a golden parachute they could care less if they unemploy everyone working under them. It's sick, it's broken, and it's wrong. Executives should only get rewarded for stewarding their company for long term profitability and treating their customers well goes a long way towards long term viability. I never trust anyone that wears a suit and a tie.
I'd go further and say that the execs don't only need ties to the business, but also to the craft. They need hard skills in making the product they sell, and knowledge of what people like about it. It's obvious that only a chef can run a kitchen, but, for some reason, it's a-ok for execs to run creative studios that make games, music or movies. So often are all of the decisions made by people with no hard skills in a creative discipline, no experience actually writing or designing anything, and no imagination. From personal experience in video game development, it's absolutely deadly to a studio, but also absolutely THE usual way it happens. Which is why so many studios implode before they've even shipped a single game, and why the majority of AAA titles are unplayable.
What more appropriate way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of DnD by making the same sort of shortsighted layoffs that TSR used to make (admittedly TSR HAD to do the layoffs due to their mismanagement and Hasbro is just doing it because they don't understand that DnD is one of their few golden geese)
They are kicking people because they don't understand that perpetual growth isn't a real thing. So they kick people to get back into a "Green" "Growth" spike. While at the same time angering all the fans so that they don't want to buy more products, and the spiral continues.
Take care of your employees, take care of your consumers and you will be golden. You might not see a Green arrow every year, but over time it will be more green than red at least.
@@Atrivion And that sort of common sense is why you just got fired and replaced with someone who promised infinite growth and used a lot of marketing buzzwords.
yeah i don't understand the demand for infinant growth. Like if my company made 200 million dollars i would be ecstatic if i made that much the next year and the next year forever.
@@BassRacerx Publicly traded companies need their shares to be high-priced and desirable, and to not get sold off. How do they do that? Give the shareholders constant growth. The shareholders are generally not privy to the company's workings, so they don't know or care HOW this happens, or if the process is killing the golden goose. If they don't get this, they'll sell off their shares and re-invest in another company that CAN deliver this. The board members don't have a particular reason to care, not when they can just spike the growth with unsustainable and predatory practices, and then ride their golden parachute to a cushy cash-out. Yes, the company will implode after they leave, but that's a Not Me problem. And the actual managers must deliver the expected results or get fired.
Essentially, it's the bystander effect. The shareholders, the board and the management can all tell themselves that they're not responsible for this insane and self-destructive system.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Ironically, the kind of lesson taught in kids’ fantasy stories.
As someone further down the thread wrote, "you're not required to upgrade". I started playing in the 80s with AD&D1e and stayed with it until 4th edition was announced and my group switched to Pathfinder. Nearly all of us decided we liked the mechanics of 3.5/Pathfinder and with all of the resources between them, we'll never need to run out of options for play.
I hope D&D pulls itself out of the hole it's digging, but it looks like we're seeing shades of 1998 when TSR had warehouses full of books they couldn't sell. They got lucky when Wizards bought them. I hope that luck continues. But if it dies on the vine, 50 years is an amazing run and there enough edtions of the game to keep people playing a long time, because, again, no one's required to upgrade.
I don't think that warehouses of books will be a problem for Hasbro!
Maybe someone normal will buy it although thats just a fantasy now.
@@laoxep Paizo, KekE
That argument pisses me off, sure I am not required to update... but I also want new people to enter the hobby and people generally want physical NEW copies to do that.
D&D being active draws new people in all the time.
@@lostsanityreturnedplaying an "outdated" edition means acquiring books will be cheaper for a time.
The idiots in charge of the big companies didnt get there from skill. They have no idea what their doing.
Silence, communist! Capitalism is a meritocracy, and I’m sure they got there through hard work, gumption, and… and…
*snicker* Yeah, I couldn’t keep it up. In all seriousness, eat the rich.
💩 Floats is a saying in Australia that is used to describe large businesses and government, but I don't know how wide spread that saying is.
Company Director Culture places every importance on lawyers and accountants with MBAs, because they make the numbers look right, and zero importance on people with actual understanding of the core business, products, and market. Making the numbers look right is all that matters when it comes to their ridiculous bonuses and cashing in their stock options, and they don't plan on sticking around any longer than they can successfully massage those numbers. They leave when the company is on the brink of collapse and some other sucker has to deal with it. Many perfectly viable companies have gone down the drain this way.
They're very skilled, very skilled at pump-and-dump, and knowing when to jump ship with their golden parachutes.
If the last meaningful D&D product to enter this world is Baldur's Gate 3, my Pathfinder-convert ass can live with that.
Iomadae be praised!
I switched to pathfinder too 🤣
dnd combat could take 2 hours.. pathfinder that same combat takes 4 hours... make combat quicker not longer
@@davrickdavrick7245 in my observation, pathfinder 2e combat is quicker and faster than 5e.
@@davrickdavrick7245 I don't know how you're running Pathfinder combat lol
Are we absolutely sure that Hasbro isn't actually trying to just straight up kill DND?
That's a good question. I wonder if any of the executive officers at Hasbro are religious nuts?
Oh they are. Fans have told them they don't need WotC to have fun/enjoy the game/or even support people making compatible materials. We are looking at the end and I think it's okay because, as Gygax foresaw, his greatest fear was when players realized they didn't need the books. That's finally happened, so they're strip mining the IP and selling it for scrap. It was always going to happen, line can't go up forever etc. etc.
In order to intentionally kill it, you'd have to know how it works and where the pain points are.
@@Banzai51 you can inexpertly bludgeon something to death. Not pretty or quick, but intentional nonetheless
Are they actually killing DnD? Yes. Are they trying? Probably not, no. Never assume malice where stupidity properly explains a situation. We're looking at stupidity.
I called this about 5 years ago.
When Chris Cox was the CEO of Wizards, and was instructed to double the revenue of Magic The Gathering (MTG) over 3 years.
Which they did. I think they actually quadrupled it.
BUT!!! I've seen this happen before with other public companies. The growth is not implemented sustainably. So MTG is now starting to take a downturn.
With the initial success of raising the revenue of MTG, Chris Cox was moved up into Hasbro. So that revenue raising mentality was being applied to many IP's in Hasbro. But the unethical, unsustainable growth is causing more problems and more backlash.
They tried to grow too quickly, too unsustainably, and now they are starting to crumble because they've predicted 'Growth' in revenue, when it's actually just been a 'Spike'.
So much of their revenue push has been on getting existing players to spend more, not by increasing their market share.
Instructing a CEO to double revenue basically means: "Please give us fake numbers the next time and use every trick in the book to dress up the bottom line while the company is burning outside of the C-suite meeting rooms."
@@EdwinSteiner I figured it means "burn this thing into the ground, because some of the important people (investors) want to move on at the highest note possible". Investors don't give a shit about about what they make.
That and people hate all things ESG and DEI related. I believe Disney is getting sued for implementing DEI hiring practices. Eventually more companies will get sued for DEI hiring practices.
@@zenvariety9383 One can only hope that these mad and discriminatory practices will be fought against.
@@zenvariety9383 What do ESG and DEI mean?
Corporations don't care about anything outside of quarterly profits.
Yet everyone cares about corporations
would probably help if they understood their audience to actually have profits
Well, more specifically, the people who usually end up in charge of corporations. Which they often do because they don’t care about anything other than quarterly profits, so… yeah, never mind, it all comes to the same thing.
Not entirely true. A lot of corporations these days will sacrifice profits to push a political agenda. i.e. Get woke, go broke. Just look at corporations like Disney and a number of video game studios that have condemned potential customers for not buying their woke garbage losing millions and many that also went bankrupt. Another great example is Anheuser-Busch and their destruction of the Bud Light brand over woke nonsense.
There's a reason most C-class executives are so often officially sociopathic@@theoneguyoverthere
The primacy of the profit motive ruins everything. TTRPGS, TTWGs, video games. All ultimately hurt by Mammon's seductive, brutal caress.
No man can serve both D&D and Mammon…
Healthcare, government services, utilities, you name it, the profit motive makes things worse.
Hasbro just doesn't understand TTRPGs. What players imagine together is what's fun, not what Hasbro tries to sell. If you take away human creativity there's no driving force. Replace creativity with a machine and you get another video game. They are trying to reinvent the wheel and applying thier clown makeup acting like we need them, and not the other way around.
@@THELUBINTHEMORNING To the extent that they *do* understand TTRPGs, though, they don’t like them. The traditional mode of play doesn’t create the golden goose they’re looking for. If they understood their product and their audience better, I’m not sure how much they’d be doing differently.
@@steelmongoose4956 If that's true then they could stand to learn a lesson from the outcome of their hubris. They are squeezing money out of of the proverbial sponge, but they need to loosen their grip before consumers will soak it with money again.
We survived the Satanic Panic, we've endured the Offended Onslaught, we will live on after the Corporate Clusterf*ck.
We are the gamers, the Wet-Ears and the Grognards. The Newbies and the Veterans
We homebrew, we house rule, we play to our tastes.
Raise a tankard brothers and sisters, and roll for initiative!
Hasbro wants to make as much money as it can with as little effort as it can. They are drying up the IRL experience to force people into their virtual DnD Roblox knock off.
The saddest part of the Hidden Path Entertainment cancellation is that they were informed of this via Twitter/X. In January 2023 in the midst of the OGL scandal, there was a Bloomberg article which stated that 5 un-named D&D video game projects were being cancelled. After being asked about it, Hidden Path Entertainment released a statement on Twitter saying that their project with WotC was still happening, and that they were hiring for positions. The author of the Bloomberg article replied to that post confirming that they stood by their reporting, and they had 2 sources (one a WotC spokesperson) confirming that Hidden Path's project was one of the ones cancelled.
I really hate this stupid trend of companies announcing firings on Twitter before even telling the employees, branches or studios in question. Same with company policy changes. Like, why are you giving orders to the social media team to blast this out first? Go talk to your employees and implement changes properly rather than throwingit out into the void of social media and expecting everyone to get their shit together from there. It's lazy at best and utterly incompetent at worst. To have a Tweet from an _entirely different company_ be the way you're informed you're fired... That's disgusting.
Buy NOTHING while our beloved game is being held hostage. Nothing. No video game. No books. No VTT service. Not a single godamn thing. They get NOTHING
I'd like to add ANY Hasbro toy or product to this list. Declare Total War.
You can count me in.
Hasbro and WotC will never see my money again.
Dungeon Crawl Classics
Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
And Lamentations of the Flame Princess gives me everything I could have wanted from them and more.
I stopped since the OGL mess. Now I’m just getting stuff from the _former_ 3rd parties. Emphasis on “former”.
Gah. The greed of Hasbro/WotC is *sickening*.
you could buy better games anyways
I got a 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual on eBay last week.
Wizards of the Coast will not see another red cent from me, when came back to the hobby and everyone was playing 5E it looked like they had gotten their act together, but the last year has shown me that my coin is better spent on 3rd party and independent games.
Might I recommend
-Dungeon Crawl Classics
-Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
-Lamentations of the Flame Princess
-Castles and Crusades
-Dungeonesque
-Into the Unknown
-Five Torches Deep
Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system
It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
If you're still buying or planning to buy anything D&D related from Hasbro/WotC, you're part of the problem.
Truth 💣
They lost me a long time ago.
Exactly. Between Paizo, Kobold Press, Frog God, Goodman Games, Legendary Games, and a host of others, there isn't a shortage of quality content, a lot of which is 5e compatible, for those who don't want to learn a new system.
If you're still playing "D&D", you're part of the problem, you're still contributing to the idea that D&D is The Game, you're still contributing to other people buying D&D products. If you genuinely care about the health of tabletop gaming, play other systems (and not just PF2e either).
@@yurisei6732 Eh, i wouldn't hate on ppl for playing dnd, even if there are better systems out there and also it would be great for ttrpg industry's health if the plethora of other systems got more players. Like, all those dnd5e books make me go Eugh. Who plays cyberpunk in dnd5e? Why not play Cyberpunk Red or smth? Won't it be a much better experience??
Dnd is kinda like elder scrolls games - yes, they are buggy and such, but it's ppl's hobby to try and fix dnd at this point.
Plus even with a barely functional system you can have fun (like how Shadowrun never had a good edition, but is fun cause of the great setting and such)
*Hasbro wondering why their D&D streaming service viewership has spiked by 10s of people* XD
It will forever remain absolutely bizzare to me that Hasbro took Wizards of the Coast, pretty much their only profitable branch thats left and decided to take them out back for the Old Yeller treatment. If WotC are your only branch with pretty much 2 billion dollar ips and everything else you own is floundering, why are they gutting wotc so much when that should be where their investment as a company goes. If im being honest i think somebody wants out, and theyve decided the only way to go is by dousing the whole thing in gasoline and striking a match
I just need it to be known that I kept hearing "robocall" as "ruble calls" and was wondering why Russian money was calling her, 😂
For the 50th, they just wanted to have the same staff size this year as when it all started?
Just as George Lucas says, "It's like poetry. It rhymes." They probably want a 50% downsize of the company. That way each year can represent another loss in staff, but a gain in profit!
I miss file sharing for this reason……lost all my Star Wars and DnD rpg books in a fire. I was raised on DnD and ADnD …….so to replace them is a horrible endeavour.
I look forward to the inevitable fire-sale of D&D to someone that can hopefully better manage the IP.
Maybe we can get discounts on 3rd and 4th edition books.
I hope it goes to a company other than Tencent if so. Honestly, I'm not sure what other corporation I'd want shepherding D&D anyway :(
I remember the sell off of 2ned stuff,
If I had my way, Troll Lord Games would get the IP.
@@dungeonsanddiscourse Let Free League pick it up. They've made a successful business model of doing other people's IP better than them anyway. :)
I've been online since getting that AOL disk in 1992.
"There's always next Christmas" was hands down one of the most devastating things I have ever seen anyone say onliine. It was also extremely important. The people who made D&D into what it is deserve to be treated better.
To be blunt, the people who made D&D into what it is (now) deserve to be treated worse. 3.0 was probably the golden time for D&D. The rules weren't perfect but they were a breath of fresh air. And the Corporate attitude was a 180 compared to Lorraine Williams' mismanagement of the company.
The people at WotC for the life of 5th and part of 4th ed are part of the problem. They vilified the older fan base calling use problematic, misogynists, racists. Then catered to people who hated D&D nerds in the past. Then the mask comes off and horrible announcements that make GW look reasonable happened.
@@dirus3142 to be fair...a lot of the old dnd content is sexists, racist and just down right problimatic...like there is lore about how drow females get off to twins fighting in the womb, and how in the first edtion of dnd females were considerd weaker MECHANCIALY and got de-buffs for being females
of course you gotta draw the line somewere and some of the things they say are problematic are downright stupid (i mean fantasy racisim isn't real racisim) but like the steryotyping and asigning diffrent fantasy races to real world steriotypes....
@@dirus3142 Allways seems to be someone else's fault isn't it? Is just like Disney, they start making incredibly shitty movies, and suddenly is the evil corporate firing inocent working people, as if they didn't deserve to be fired with malicious intent in the first place. For all the problems X might have now, people sure quickly forgot the shithole it was as Twitter. It just took 80% of the staff to make that change.
The gaming industry laying off all these people seems like a shot in the foot to me, in my experience of being an artist with friends who are active in the industry, a lot of the people who work in these companies are also the people who buy the products, it feels like with so many lay offs everywhere less people will have the funds to actually buy things, also, this was always going to happen, no industry can grow forever and I think they pretty much got to the bottom of everyone who can actually afford to game.
I've been Forever DMing D&D games in person since 3.5 edition, and I'm actually okay with it. I've been playing since 2nd edition and have put so many years into D&D that I'm cool with only being a DM these years. Honestly, I get more enjoyment out of it on this side of the screen. But I never run official campaign stories. I have all the side content books, the stuff that's full of things for players and items and monsters, but I avoid the books that are just mostly 80% campaigns since I don't run them. I usually base my games in the Forgotten Realms on the Sword Coast, but I create my own stories and adventures for the players to enjoy. (Or as we all know, I let them create the story and it loosely ties to the end goals I had set in motion for them.) My players and friends know that ever since all this weird behavior started with Hasbro/Wizards (mainly the idea they would go all online and charge everyone for everything to even access something to use in a game.) that if it came down to it, we're fine! I can continue running games in person using what I have and all the stuff I already create as needed. I'm really thinking 5th edition will be the last time I pay for anything officially D&D if this crazy stuff keeps up.
my group has bounced between 3rd and 2nd ed. We actually are settling on 2nd with all the detailed content and worlds available.
Saw this coming when i could not effectively transfer my character to its system, 4th ed, that i had since AD&D. The boys and me play Pathfinder as a sup to 3.5 and have been loving it for years. Do take a few things though from 4th like their minion rules. The only thing i took from 5th was scaling cantrip dmg.
I am remembering a movie scene where Jeremy Irons is telling gis employees that they were going to get ahead of the 2008 financial crash by screwing everyone before they are screwed.
I never saw the D&D movie but it sounds more subversive than I imagined. (Jeremy apparently took the role because he had a castle to pay for. Good on him for getting in a dig at predatory capitalism.
Margin Call! Great movie!! Fantastic cast :)
The difference though is that Irons’ company in Margin Call still had some care for their employees. Even if it was purely pragmatic, at least those guys got huge bonuses to either shut them up or get the job done. Hasbro’s case is an unfathomable mix of greed, short-sightedness, and self-inflicted injury.
@@javierpatag3609 That is a good point. Those traders had their careers torched, and their professional relationships ruined but they got the kind of bonuses that let you start over.
Jeremy Irons may have been an evil narcissist setting fire to the nation's economy in order to avoid paying for his own hubris. But at least he had standards.
Is it just me, or is Hasbro actively trying to kill D&D?
I was a Wizards of the Coast employee who got "downsized" and booted in the first round of purges right after Hasbro acquired WotC back in 2000-2001. Hasbro is a soulless, hateful corporation who have never understood games. They buy companies, interested only in profits. When they don't get the money they want, they punish the employees. They don't care about the games you love. They don't care about fans. They don't care about customers. They care about money, and NOTHING else. They aren't shy about this at all. They openly admit it.
DO NOT give Hasbro your money. Ever.
damn that sucks, I'm sorry to hear about that!
I knew there was a streaming service but I’ve never been able to actually find a video or stream… ever. Found dead links and roundabout links, but that’s it.
Yeah, no one actually seems to know where to find it. Maybe you need wotc corporate VPN to see it
It's almost as if anything that could have a unifying effect - bringing people of various generations, backgrounds, and walks of life together - is being deliberately dismantled while concurrently manufacturing drama that keeps the respective groups fighting amongst themselves.
Oh, you saw that.
All of this is so fucking sad. D&D saw a renaissance with 5e. I was able to get so many people who were completely terrified of 3.5's crunch at the table and enjoying themselves, Critical Role became a thing, D&D Beyond was really cool, excellent campaigns were being released, etc, etc. It's incredibly disappointing to see Hasbro torpedo the entire brand in such a short time frame. I'm just at a loss for words watching this train wreck happen
Calling 5E a "Renaissance" is like saying that you really like what the lobotomy did for your sibling because they are so much easier to handle, just sitting in the corner and drooling.
This train wreck should have happened in 2008 with the joke that was 4th Edition but people who were willing to Weekend at Bernie's something in order to call themselves a fan kept this zombie shuffling until now.
If it means anything the OSR community is supporting the hobby behind the scenes.
If you want something good from a company that doesn't view you as a dollar sign and nothing more.
I recommend taking interest in one of them.
If you can't step away from 5E mechanics
I recommend
Dungeonesque
Five Torches Deep
Or Into the Unknown
@@JohnAPrins 5e brought in a good amount of new players in my area. Just breathe
@@VictorTejada-y2z I feel like we have very different opinions on the importance of gatekeeping in maintaining the integrity and quality of a group or product. I have played since Advanced 2E and the quality of player has been a slow decline since then.
IMO 3.5 struck the perfect combo of maintaining game/player quality while increasing accessibility, 4E and 5E were just WotC enticing people who have trouble blinking and breathing simultaneously to pad their bottom line while making long time fans have to sort through an ever increasing rough for some diamonds.
Oh, I see what you did there with the comparison of the various settings.
Glad i stuck it out and just got all things 2nd-3.5 edition. When are they going to do more stuff with the Ravenloft setting?
Never, probably. At least nothing actually good
Remember when Investors said that Hasbro and WOTC should split because Hasbro was unhealthy and would be the death of both brands? They were right.
I'm still in shock that anything with a pulse could say no to Joey Mangoes.
Because they're bad at their job and DnD hasn't had a good edition since 3.5. The 'designers' dont even play tabletop RPGS at all, and dont even understand how imbalanced their own game is.
Worst part about this for me personally, I literally just got back in contact with my old D&D group from two years ago, and was going to celebrate by figuring out what books I could get for each of them to help them with their characters and interests... Now the idea of buying the books feels kinda sick... Even buying books for myself just feels a little gross....
It's still a great idea! Just buy something that's not published by WotC. There are tons of cool third party books out there, which would have the added bonus of supporting some of the best D&D channels on UA-cam.
You can also buy second hand. You get the book without giving additional money to them and recycling which is pretty green.
@@Zoe-uz9kn ... and there are probably enough people pissed off enough at WotC/Hasbro that they want to ditch D&D for some other system that second-hand availability should be no problem.
Hey, Chris Cocks! Lorraine Williams called and wanted to say thanks for taking the "Worst D&D Executive" title away.
Who the hell wants to pay over $50 for an adventure module? Hasbro has screwed up this IP so badly.
I will
But not from WotC/Hasbro's dumb ass.
Shit I'll throw 100+ at a good Megadungeon like Maze of the Blue Medusa
I say they should sell D&D to Laraian Studios which give the community what they want✊🏼💯
Larian is a video game company... But I dont think it would be a bad transition. They could just hire all the people layed off by Hasbro! Lol
@@TheManyVoicesVA it seems Larian Studios cares more about D&D then WOTC/Hasbro with all their pandering to woke crap…hell you get half races in BG3 which WOTC is changing in the new PHB
Give it either to Larian Studios or Owlcat Games, both are amazing when it comes to cRPGs.
been playing dnd since 2006, did not know there was a streaming service lol
Play Pathfinder. Stop feeding greedy corporations
Pathfinder is still corpo. But actually inline with the community.
@@RobertStoll all the rules are free on archives of nethys
Heaps of other alternatives to Sword and Sorcery rpgs. Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Traveller, Vampire...
@@RobertStoll Paizo is not a big corporation. They've got like 125 people and are privately owned. There's no shareholders to worry about.
Or play Pbta games if you like story telling
“Fucking worm tongue rides over the hill” 😂😂😂😂😂 fuck, I died laughing
Might I Recommend
-Dungeon Crawl Classics
-Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
-Lamentations of the Flame Princess
-Castles and Crusades
-Dungeonesque
-Into the Unknown
-Five Torches Deep
Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system
It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
I guess I'll just stick with my beloved 2Ed then.
Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
And
Dungeon Crawl Classics for me
But same sentiment
Hasbro won't sell D&D. They'll transform from a toy/game-making company into a holding company before they'd do that.
Hasbro seems to be unintentinally scrapping D&D. I'm sure Hasbro and _perhaps_ even WotC can recover from all these scandals and lay-offs, but I'm not sure D&D can. Not under tgeir management, at least. I van't imagine how many more people will move on from D&D because of the delay to the updated rules's release
Great video! Really has felt like Hasbro is strip-mining the IP. Maybe it would be best for them to focus on MTG digital, but I hope that doesn't mean D&D movies/games/physical products are going extinct.
Your LOTR "Look to the East reference" was hilarious! =)
I am long time rpg fan, rarely get to play d&d anymore(lack of DM's). I have started playing (mongoose)Traveller and find it so much better
Same but for me it's Dungeon Crawl Classics and Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
Are you trolling, or did you show Pathfinder's Golarian when saying "Dragonlance" and switch to a shot of Eberon when saying "Forgotten Realms:" to make a rhetorical point?
Either way, well done, and ow my brainpan...
Ceterum (autem) censeo Hasbro esse delendam.
Had a friend just talk about some of this not that long ago. He talked about how confused he was by all of the BS Hasbro was doing when all they really had to do when they got DnD was to make a few shows, both for adults and kids (get 'em while their young), make minis and buildable sets (he said himself he would would have gone nuts over it if they had made set maps where you can keep buying things to add to buildings and what) and even make some really fun die. Maybe even come up with some more gimmicky toy stuff people would have loved to buy. That's all they had to do and they would have made a mint! They wouldn't even have to fire anyone and they could have taken all of the credit for everything. But noooo they had to think they knew better than what the players wanted and tried to fix something that wasn't even broken.
Now I don't know if any of that WOULD have made them a mint but honestly it would have been really cool, imo, to be able to buy sets of different locations I could build and put together for our games. And also just have some stuff to decorate around the place if they were kind of nice. AND a kid cartoon show about the world of DnD would have been a really good idea to get the kids into it. My Little Adventurers! Hell, you want a gimmick for the show that fits a bit more game play? Give the characters magical die they have to roll to get power ups or something like that and then SELL THOSE DIE.
It's really to bad about the Drangonlance show. While not over all my favorite story line it IS however a great idea for a show and it really would have brought a lot of people into the game. Or at least be interested in DnD stuff.
I enjoy your passionate videos, thanks!
hey thanks so much!!!
Everyone who was excited for Tencent buying D&D because "they couldn't do worse" is going to be incredibly dismayed when it ultimately gets sold to someone even worse. Shitty companies don't sell their IPs to better ones. They'll always get more money from worse companies, because the shittiest companies are the ones who can make the most from absolutely destroying beloved properties.
Also, super curious to see if Stephen Glicker is right about release date tomfoolery actually being about re-categorizing the physical products as "games" rather than "books" to squeeze retailers for higher cuts of sales, and the ability to reject returns.
"[...] Between Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms" *using pathfinder images >:/* I see what you did there, also hey warchief . ;)
D&D sucks anyway. It used to be good a long time ago, back in 1st and 2nd ed. Downhill ever since. But it's not a problem, because they have paved the way for MUCH better games.
Third party content has been better and more inspiring for a few years now. I have started pouring into those and have not looked back. No regrets and fantastic games.
Might I recommend
-Dungeon Crawl Classics
-Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
-Lamentations of the Flame Princess
-Castles and Crusades
-Dungeonesque
-Into the Unknown
-Five Torches Deep
Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system
It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
Zombie horde of vastly talented people who luv D&D and will bleed to make the IP everything it could be >< Hasbro "Nah, yer fired."
At this point the only thing people can do his claim the franchise under the public fandom and do their things 'un-officially'. Hasbro his going in flames, the next editions are likely gonna be a.i. produce anyway ( cheaper and just a add brand on cover to sell billion ).
Definitely since all I've seen and heard is people involved with art and the design being laid off.
Fans and 3rd Party definetely do it better than the original handlers now. Fans post stuff for free and 3rd Party actually provide content in their products. How could WOTC ever compete?
I love that people slathering for WotC have been going "well people can always buy the old monster manual"
That is horrible advice, not only do we know there will be substantial power creep over the powercreep we already had in tashas... but people are recommending an old already poorly balanced book to new people, which will be replaced mere months.
So lucky that we still have Paizo and Pathfinder.
And if your looking from something else.
Might I recommend
-Dungeon Crawl Classics
-Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
-Lamentations of the Flame Princess
-Castles and Crusades
-Dungeonesque
-Into the Unknown
-Five Torches Deep
Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system
It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
Not a fan of Tencent, but getting a low ESG score is almost a good thing. ESG vs Tencent is a battle of evil where evil always wins.
At this point, as someone who was playing AD&D since the 80s, I want to cue the "First time?" Clip from Buster Scruggs.
I'm one of the people who is still looking forward to the proposed changes to 5e because as time has gone forward from 2014, I think the foundations for a newer edition have never been stronger thanks in large part to the robustness of 5e. However, the never-ending shit show that has been the corporate-level decisions have been sabotaging my hopes for the simple desire of parting in ONE D&D or whatever the hell they call it in the future. And that's all tainted PURELY by these high-level decision. D&D happens at the table, but I don't see why I have to pay the price for progress because a CEO (and company) wanted a bonus. But they were never the stewards of the game to start with. I'm so infuriated by the ceaseless money-grubbing at the expense of the large group of fans who Hasbro has only ever taken for granted.
This is probably not a popular opinion, as I understand and don't blame people for abandoning D&D as an IP over these unending problems, but the game is OURS to run and I fundamentally feel like I'm struggling against a wave of greed that only wants to milk my hobby for all its worth.
I don't think D&D will die, but at this point, I'm not going to be broken hearted if it does. There are other games out there.
The hobby is out there, I have been converting dnd to other systems
The "Middle Earth" setting with an image of World of Warcraft was hilarious.
Love D&D, played with my brothers as kid, with our kids and now with our grandchildren.
What happened?
They betrayed their core audience and are rightfully paying for it.
This didn't start in December 2023, it has been brewing for years and WotC/Hasbro took a rapid series of actions around the beginning of 2023.
They violated M:tG's Reserve List and tried to ditch the OGL before they sent armed thugs after a small time UA-cam channel.
After years of declining quality of products and art, a lot of long time players have checked out.
WotC/Hasbro wanted to court a "modern audience", let's see how they do with them.
How is that DM crisis going?
"DM crisis" ha, we just let AI do that! That will work, right? right?
would be really great if you started putting links to videos/articles/whatever you are talking about in the description
WOTC’s Dragonlance slipcase and board game sold poorly because they were poorly written trash that notably excluded consultation with the original authors. WotC couldn’t allow another Dragonlance piece of writing OUTSHINE their terrible handling of the IP.
As Joe Manganiello said, D&D quality has been all down hill since they demoted Mike Mearls, who was the main consultant to Larian for BG3.
I think WIZBRO is taking a page from Disney’s play book and tanking every legacy franchise they own on purpose. That will give D&D fans nowhere else to go but to the VTT.
If there VTT fails to hit the $1b annual revenue by 2027, you’ll see Hasbro either moth ball or sell off the D&D IP. Personally, I wish they would sell off all of the TSR era IPs separately and just retain 3E, 4E, 5E and 6E.
As long as Paizo sticks to his schedule. I love the remastered Pathfinder 2e.
Its imho the better D&D :)
You mean 4th edition but fixed ? 🍻
Personally Dungeon Crawl Classics and Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea itch that niche for me.
Many companies close down divisions of expensive departments because they've already made deals for the division's sale.
I switch to dungeon crawl classics long ago and never looked back.
Dungeon Crawl Classics and Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea SAVED the hobby for me.
The most fun I've ever had at a table
One of the things I find very frustrating as a both a pro-DM and a someone who runs a D&D club for teens is, the lack of content from WotC for the content making D&D popular.
When the movie came out, I got a bunch of new players who wanted to play games themed around the movie. Other than stat blocks and magic items, there was no official content.
And now with Baldur's Gate 3 being still very popular, other than stat blocks, we still have no official content from WotC.
The Dragonlance TV show would have been awesome in terms of growing interest in the Dragonlance WotC content - It was tempting me to invest in the related books, but now that is unlikely.
From someone with a business background, I don't understant the choices WotC are making. Either there is something they are planning and keeping it very secret, or someone is making terrible decisions.
Great video. Keep up the good work. I also had no idea about the D&D stream - and I'm ussually on to it with D&D stuff!
Just gives me stronger desire to translate 5th edition to other systems. Hell, someone could make more money than Hasbro selling conversion kits to Pathfinder, etc.
A lot of 3pp bestiaries port over to Pathfinder surprisingly easily, I've found. With those in hand, some major product identity statblocks converted, the actual adventures probably go down real smooth.
Honestly, the hardest part of converting Sunless Citadel was wrapping my head around Pathfinder's Hazards system for traps.
@@ChanJENI Traps in Pf2e are pretty much enemies who can't move or act outside of reacting to their trigger
Switched to PF2e over the past year. Can't recommend it enough - it's a fucking joy to GM for compared to 5e (which I loved, but huge improvement)
What do you mean ?
The mechanic? The adventures ? Cause pretty much everything has already been done.
Might just not know about it.
Might I recommend
-Dungeon Crawl Classics
-Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
-Lamentations of the Flame Princess
-Castles and Crusades
-Dungeonesque
-Into the Unknown
-Five Torches Deep
Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system
It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
God I did not expect someone else to throw some hate at Tencent for the death of ArcheAge.
Correction it’s laying off not firing, saying they were fired implies this was motivated by poor performance and not greed
Huh. Solid point
Henry Cavill is your patreon? THE Henry Cavill?
".. there's a D&D Streaming service.." oh yeah I remember someone cracking jokes about no one knowing it had launched a few years ago... totally forgot that existed!
I got into roleplaying through Battletech and MechWarrior and haven't looked D&D ever since THAC0. But, I love roleplaying games and then are so many out there! Back in the day I played a lot of Vampire TM, Rifts, Palladium Fantasy, Ninjas and Super Spies, (A lot of Palladium) and Cyberpunk, MechWarrior, and others... D&D is generic fantasy, which has only become more and more generic as they merge all the different settings into one. Oh, Werewolf was and is a great RPG. Play out stuff. D&D will probably get sold to Tencent as the currently considered debunked rumors said.
That Hollywood cabal also includes Tom Morello, the amazing guitarist of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave!
Hasbro will never sell the D&D IP. They will shove it in storage and sit on it until a time in the future they think they could get the money they feel they deserve. They sat on the MLP IP for 20ish years before they struck lightning with Friendship is Magic. There hasn't really been much of anything from GIJoe since the cartoons, except a couple failures of movies and their recent toy line. So I highly doubt they will sell off the D&D IP unless some company comes by and offers an excessively groutesque amount of money. Sadly.
Best to leave and find something better.
Might I recommend
-Dungeon Crawl Classics
-Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea
-Lamentations of the Flame Princess
-Castles and Crusades
-Dungeonesque
-Into the Unknown
-Five Torches Deep
Shit even Numenera and the Cypher system
It and Exalted would honestly fit A LOT of your tables better than D&D ever could.
Pathfinder player here
Lol lmao
This is so sad. Our group hasn't bought any new D&D books or anything related in at least 8 years. We play 3.5 Ed and Pathfinder 1 Ed and have since those were released, so this doesn't effect us. I've really loved watching the 'D&D renaissance' since 5 Ed was released, but have been mystified by Hasbroken's seeming sacrifice of the cash cow. WTAF?!?!
SMFH.
Oh well. Back to my Gen X solo games.
Roll 1 dice.
Roll a 1: one night with Samatha Fox
Roll a 2: one night with Belinda Carlisle.
Roll a 3: One night with Toni Basil.
Roll a 4: one night with Kim Wilde
Roll a 5: one night with Madonna [hey man I have to put one booby prize option in here]
Roll a 6: one night with Kylie MInogue.
Roll 5 requires a DC20 Con check…
@steelmongoose4956 😂😂😂 this made me laugh so hard
Hasbros hasn't been able to assemble a decent rendition of any of the classic DnD settings (TSR settings...) With the possible exceptions of Toril and Oerth in the 3rds, since they took over the product line. Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Dragonlance, Planescape, as they exist now, are basically just hardcover magazine articles, and they can't even expand them to their full extent due to the fact that they made each one more generic in tone. Spelljammer used to be sci-fi meets fantasy, now it's high fantasy IN SPACE. Ravenloft used to be gothic, now it's creepy high fantasy, there was nothing high fantasy about Dark Sun, so they just dropped it entirely. The settings used to be more distinct, even at a glance, in every edition prior to this one, I hate 4e but even then the settings they covered were distinct. There is simply nothing that contemporary DnD offers that I'm interested in: from shady business practices (to say the least) to lazy game design I'll keep playing my older editions, but if I want to play a less crunchy 3.5 (5e) I'll just homebrew that shit. Or just play BECMI and call it a day.
I had my fill of microtransactions in Guild Wars 2. If Hasbro are determined to turn D&D into a cesspool, there are other TTRPGS.
Hasbro announced that it expects a 3-5% drop this year, and with the absolute failure of the newest Magic set you can expect it to be worse than that. My guess is that Hasbro has realized they can't squeeze DnD players like they do Magic players, and the plan is to pretty much stop doing anything for DnD.
fired = AI costs less than amazingly CREATIVE people
The image used at 8:47 for "Dragonlance" is actually the Pathfinder Setting and the image used at 8:49 for "Forgotten Realms" is actually the Eberron setting. Just FYI.
I am both amused and saddened that some apparently believe that previous editions offering a fully-functional game experience somehow ceased to exist.
When a company puts profit over base, well, it is off-putting to the audience, and they move on to something else. Hasbro will learn the hard way. I normally buy MTG but haven't in recent years cos they feel meh compared to the older stuff. Never played DnD, but I have played MTG and read the Forgotten Realms books. Only played BG3 in the DnD portion of the franchise.
Joe is a father figure, DD! He's not your "daddy figure!" 😆
Keep out of peoples dreams! Lol